Of War and Men and Woe and Mallice
by Pen-and-Paper93
Summary: Two Poems, Some quotes and a short story. Of war and its victims, not just of one side but of all. Consider if there were no war, think of the great literature and art that would never have come, think of the price we paid to know truly how far humans can be stretched before they break. All we know from these experiments is that it would take an unliving soul to push any harder.


War Poems

AN: These are two poems (I can't rhyme but I tried) about soldiers. I've just finished the book 'Birdsong' and then I watched 'My Boy Jack' and I've started to read the Game of Thrones series and it got me thinking how commercialised war is. Think of the hundreds of authors who write war based books, or films, or poetry. All our greats. Tennyson, Kipling, even Tolkien and CS Lewis. It's sad but true and odd but true that people feel the need to know the horror of war, and then I think feel a guilt for not knowing of these great soldiers automatically so they write of them, to enshrine them in some way. I think every single person in the world ought to create something to remember all the people to die in war. And not just your own side, even now. Imagine how strongly someone has to believe in their cause to knowingly bomb themselves to death or to climb out a trench into the eye of a 45. I am not defending or siding with anyone's ambition to kill another person, all I am asking of you is to just imagine.

A soldier is a wonder to me

Be he willing or weathered

Past or present

Of sabre, gun or tank

A soldier whom endures

Be he British, Iranian or Yank

A story told or a picture showed

Of cavalry, pilot or sailor

A soldier with naught

Naught but courage, ambition and pride

With blind hope, boldness or determination

Of fear, sorrow and suffering

To have read the books

Heard the poems

Watched the films

Seen the photos

Heard the news

And sing the songs

I only imagine the life that you left

And if you regret

The life that you risked

And the life I won't ever forget

107,000,000.

It may be years,

I may not have known

The horrors of that world you've shown,

The lives shredded bare to bone

But I imagine the scene,

The trench

The tunnel

The bombing

The struggle

I hear the songs

I read the stories

I see my generation and I know

It's yours only

A shame to see

The foolishness of mine to thee

When you were brave

Before your time

Mine only have a love of wine

I thank you all, every one.

Else I'd never known

A single soul as good as you

All one hundred and seven million.

I went to Lille, in France, with my school years ago and I hadn't slept the entire night on the bus over but first thing when we got there they took us to a graveyard, there was nothing there, no statues, no museum, nothing, just a white picket fence around about 6 acres (six full size rugby pitches) and it was filled from fence to fence with white graves. I was fourteen at the time and even though I was stumbling I was so tired it was shocked. The graveyard was built on the battle field there these men had died. They were all allied troops from WW2 and they'd all been shipped from Britain, their families and loved ones to be shot down in France or die in a trench and they'd never come home.

They gave us each a card with a name and a regiment on it. As we went through our trip we had to find out all we could about our soldier. Mine was called William James McCloud from Waterford Ireland. He was mentioned in several letters home that were preserved in a museum in Belgium. His friends called him Willy Jimmy Cloud, and they all said how he was keeping spirits up with crass jokes that would make a sailor blush. One mentioned if he could come home with his friend for Christmas because his family were killed before he left. Also adding on that they'd have to keep a check on their sisters with him about. I then found service records of his contracting trench foot and temporary discharge, however a month later it was declared misdiagnosed and he was sent back. He died in the Battle of the Bulge with multiple gun wounds among a majority American army. If you come across his grave (and I know this is a long shot) he was 27 when he died and I would appreciate if you could spare him a flower or two, I feel like he was part of my family. He was buried in a non-descript cemetery with the same white stone as the millions of others, apart from the words beneath his name _'It ain't banjaxed, she'd still lie down in nettles for it.'_

Finally I just want to quote some of the best lines of war based literature which I think everyone should think of on remembrance day.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"  
_None this tide,_  
_Nor any tide,_  
_Except he did not shame his kind —_  
_Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide."_

_Rudyard Kipling – My Boy Jack_

'_Cannon to right of them,  
Cannon to left of them,  
Cannon in front of them  
Volley'd & thunder'd;  
Storm'd at with shot and shell,  
Boldly they rode and well,  
Into the jaws of Death,  
Into the mouth of Hell  
Rode the six hundred.'_

_Tennyson – Charge of the Light brigade_

'_Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why,  
Did all those who lay here really know why they died?  
And did they believe when they answered the call,  
Did they really believe that this war would end war?  
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,  
The killing and dying were all done in vain,  
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,  
And again and again and again and again'_

_(Song) Eric Bogle – Willie McBride/Green fields of France/No-man's Land_

_(I recommend Dropkick Murphy's version)_

'_The old lie: __Dulce et decorum est  
Pro patria mori.'_

_(Pronounced: Duel-see et dee-cor-um est pro pat-ree-a more-e)_

_Means: 'It is sweet and fitting to die for ones country.'_

_Wilfred Owen - Dulce et decorum est._

_Latin is a line from Roman playwright Horace._


End file.
